Wowhead Weekly is a World of Warcraft podcast with Wowhead Site Manager Perculia and Video Manager TradeChat where all the recent Blizzard news and Wowhead developments are discussed. You can subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see every episode. We also livestream each episode Friday afternoons, starting at 6pm EST, on twitch.tv/wowhead. If you subscribe to our twitch channel, you can get Pepe and rocket emotes!

World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume 1

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 is a journey through an age of myth and legend, a time long before the Horde and the Alliance came to be. This definitive tome of Warcraft history reveals untold stories about the birth of the cosmos, the rise of ancient empires, and the forces that shaped the world of Azeroth and its people.

This beautiful hardcover features twenty-five full-page paintings by World of Warcraft artist Peter Lee, as well as a cosmology chart, half a dozen maps charting changes through time, and other line art illustrations by Joseph Lacroix, and marks the first in a multipart series exploring the Warcraft universe; from the distant past to the modern era.

We previously shared a Chronicle teaser that's available to download; today we've got an excerpt about Sargeras and some maps. (On Wowhead Weekly, you can catch us reading this passage about Sargeras, as well as an additional passage on the rise of the Nightborne.)

This book is packed with lore and art; we have plans for a guide series covering quests and zones related to each chapter.

Maps and Art

Here's a teaser of some of the paintings, line art, and maps in Chronicle. The maps cover: The Black Empire, Ordered Azeroth, Night Elf Empire. These images are packed with details; click on them to enlarge.

As the Pantheon searched for slumbering world-souls, Sargeras and Aggramar continued their hunt for errant demons. The two champions agreed that they could protect more worlds if they worked apart, only calling on each other for aid in times of dire need. Thus, they went their separate ways.

It was during this epoch that Sargeras discovered the full horror of the void lords' plans.

He was drawn to a remote corner of the Great Dark, where cold Void energies radiated out from a black and desiccated world. There, Sargeras found enormous beings he had never seen, festering across the world's surface. These were the Old Gods, and they had embedded themselves in the world and shrouded it in a veil of Void energies.

With growing horror, Sargeras realized that this was not just any world. He heard the world-soul dreaming within its core. But these were not the joyous dreams Sargeras recognized from other world-souls--they were dark and horrific nightmares. The Old Gods' tendrils had burrowed deep, enveloping the slumbering titan's spirit in shadow.

A conclave of nathrezim had also discovered this black world. They came to dwell among the Old Gods, basking in their dark power. Sensing their evil, Sargeras captured and ruthlessly interrogated the nathrezim. The broken demons revealed what they had learned about the Old Gods and the intentions of the void lords. If the powers of the Void succeeded in corrupting a nascent titan, it would awaken as an unspeakably dark creature. No power in creation, not even the Pantheon, could stand against it. In time, the warped titan would consume all matter and energy in the universe, bringing every mote of existence under the void lords' will.

Sargeras, the undefeated champion of the titans, knew fear for the first time. It dawned on him that just as the Pantheon had been searching for world-souls, so, too, had the void lords. Sargeras had never dreamed that Void energies could so utterly consume a slumbering titan.

Yet the poof was right before his eyes.

Rage and anguish burned through Sargeras's soul. He smote the nathrezim with a single blow--his fury so great that he utterly obliterated the demons' forms. Sargeras turned his attention to the black world itself. His heart ached with sorrow, for he knew there was only one way to stop the dark titan from rising.

With a heave of his blade, Sargeras split the world in two. The resultant explosion consumed the Old Gods and their energies, but it killed the nascent titan as well.

Sargeras immediately returned to the rest of the Pantheon and summoned Aggramar to his side. Before the gathered titans, Sargeras recounted his discoveries. The other Pantheon members were stunned by what they had learned, but even more so by Sargeras's rash action. They chastised him for so needlessly killing one of their kin. Had he called on their aid, they argued, they could have purged the world-soul of corruption.

Although Sargeras tried to convince them that what he had done was necessary, he came to realize it was futile. The other titans had not seen what he had seen. They would never understand why he had taken such drastic measures. Apart from Aggramar, the other titans had no firsthand knowledge of the Void or demons. They could not fathom the depths of such malice and corruptive power.

Heated arguments flared between Sargeras and the rest of the Pantheon concerning how best to deal with the threat posed by the void lords. Above all, Sargeras feared that if the Old Gods had corrupted one world-soul, they might have corrupted many others as well. It might be too late to stop them.

Sargeras expressed his growing fear that existence itself was already flawed--an idea that he had come to terms with following his encounter with the Old Gods. Only by burning away all of creation could the titans stand a chance of thwarting the void lords' ultimate goal. In Sargeras's mind, even a lifeless universe was better than one dominated by the Void. Life had taken root in the cosmos once before. Perhaps after the physical universe was scoured of corruption, life would take root once again.

This idea horrified the rest of the Pantheon. Eonar, the Life-Binder, reminded Sargeras that the titans had sworn to protect living things whenever possible. Nothing could be so dire as to warrant systemic extinction. Even Aggramar stood against his mentor, arguing that there must be another way to defeat the void lords. He urged Sargeras to abandon this dark plan and reason out another solution.

Overcome with despair and feelings of betrayal, Sargeras stormed away from the other titans. He knew full well that his kin would never see reason. And if they would not help him expel the void lords' corruption, then he would do it himself.

This was the last time the titans of the Pantheon would see him as one of their own.

Legion Blue Posts

Legion Artifacts

Artifacts are still very much a WIP on the Legion Alpha, but more hints have emerged on Twitter as to how they will work.

Of particular note is the reference to the Artifact Upgrade questline that requires group content to complete. Previously, WarcraftDevs tweeted that a 3rd relic slot would be unlocked on your artifact shortly after hitting 110. Recently, we've seen sources added for Artifact Appearances and one points to completing the quest "Ancient Power"--perhaps the two are related.

An additional tweet references the recent change to Artifact Weapon passives. Previously on the Legion Alpha, your artifact weapon granted an ability which was separate from your first Artifact Trait. In the recent build, your weapon now unlocks the first artifact trait and that weapon equip is incorporated into a different spot in the artifact calculator.

Finally, as covered in our datamining post, there are additional artifact traits with 20 ranks. These are not yet implemented into the in-game Artifact UI. There were also new traits added called Ancient Power, which simply increase damage/healing/survivability by 5%, which have been added to the in-game Artifact UI. Is it a coincidence that this trait shares the same name as the quest tied to an artifact appearance?

Legion PvP

Phalanx

Philosophically we're okay if some of the core talents aren't super nail biting choices all the time for PvP. I think in an ideal world every core talent and honor talent is an interesting choice in all aspects of the game, but if talents such as Pittura di Guerra become the de facto talent in PvP (not saying it is or isn't right now) it's not that big of deal to us. It's challenging to create core talents that are competitive, interesting choices in PvE let alone both PvE and PvP.

Our design direction with Arms vs Fury is that Arms should have more burst or "frontload" damage, while Fury is stronger at sustained and has better mobility. While Fury does take more damage while enraged, that's being factored into the balance of the spec overall. You'll have higher health and self-healing. (Note: Tuning is still in progress)

Regarding mobility, it's very much a hot topic with us currently. Arcane Mages and Sub Rogues are engineered by us to have some of the highest escape tools out of the specs, but they're intended to be glass cannons and countered by specs that can dampen their burst damage (Tank specs, Paladinos) or where their escape tools aren't as strong (Warlocks, Hunters). That said, their mobility/escape may be too out of line right now and may need changes. If we're going to do mobility changes it's likely going to be us toning down the stronger specs rather than buffing the weaker ones.

Desvin

We'll be rotating between battlegrounds, skirmishes and Ashran throughout the beta. We want to focus people on one particular activity during Beta.

Desvin

First of all bug - we can't rune forge our weapons and we have artifact talents for them.

Second question - can we use Rune Forge Enchants in instanced PvP (arenas, battle grounds). Because if we can't we literally lose a talent from our artifact talents and Fallen Crusader with 100% extra effect is good part of our survivability

These are good questions and we will discuss. Currently, no enchants offer any benefit but Rune Forge Enchants are a part of the Cavaliere della Morte class. Whether we allow them in PvP or not, we will tune the class's PvP stats based on whether those enchants work or not.

Desvin

Luce del Protettore currently heals almost like a Lay on hands. Might want to take a look into that.

It will be reduced in PvP. It will be changed to 15% in an upcoming hotfix.

Desvin

Ferita Putrescentes shouldn't be dispellable as it is too central to the spec's functionality. We've already made this change for the next release.

Class Feedback

Kalgan

Ira Sacra -- This ability needs to go. Degenerate gameplay will only ensue from this. Purposefully forcing a player to take damage & causing heart-attacks for Healers is not cool or interesting. It's infuriating. I can't imagine what Equality encourages and causes to be objectively better than what its setting out to achieve. Neat idea, VERY bad gameplay. I think we have enough of that take-damage-deal-damage paradigm as is via Scudo della Vendetta – at least this encourages us to stay alive and simultaneously reward that effort.

I think this talent touches on a handful of topics about class design philosophy. It's a great example of talent design that doesn't fit today's norm, but in a good way - and in a way that we need more of, not less. The topics I see in play here are philosophies about what role talents play, the mechanics of a talent that require a player to take damage, and possibly the location of the talent in the tree.

In a forum discussion, we tend to get lost in the mechanics of an ability. This is true not only because the most well-spoken players on our forums are organized raiders with personalities that lean toward the analytical, but also because the nature of a forum lends itself to considering theoretical use cases more than the actual moment-to-moment experience of playing the game.

In my actual experience of playing a ret paladin in Legion content, I'd say that equality might just be the most fun and gratifying talent in the tree. It's gleefully fun when you end up in a situation that would have resulted in your death to hit the button and watch your enemies go from nearly full to dead. As much as an expert player might imagine that such a situation never applies to them, the reality is that it does (and more so in Legion world content than in the recent past). Beyond that, it's fun to occasionally manufacture exactly that situation.

It's important to recognize that so much of World of Warcraft resides outside the confines of reliably topping a damage meter in a 10 player raid. This is particularly true once again in Legion, where we anticipate that players will spend far more time in non-raid content than they have in recent years due to the role of 5-player dungeons and world quests (fueled by the general possibility of getting an item upgrade from any content in the game), and of course pvp. As such, it's important that we view talent design through the lens of "not everything will or should be the most efficient path to victory in a raid".

As to the mechanics of this talent, many players balk at the group play implications of a talent that assumes you've taken a bunch of damage, comparing that with a variety of other mechanics we've had in the game at one point or another that encouraged a player to take damage. For content that isn't particularly challenging, it tends to be a non-issue (if you want to potentially get yourself killed, have at it). As it relates to challenging content, our experience suggests that frequency is a meaningful part of this equation, and if in challenging content healers are stressed it also implies that the stress is as a result of players taking damage that is out of their control, which also implies that over the course of an encounter a reasonable opportunity to use the ability without deliberately manufacturing the conditions will arise due to its long cooldown.

In addition, from a purely mathematical perspective the ability does (or at least should) hold up if you use it around every 7 minutes or so, enough to provide some slush to account for the situational nature of the spell. In addition, the talent nets meaningful damage over time and should/does hold up against the other talents in the tier.

Ira Sacra is not a fun ability to use in any practical sense outside of PvP or solo content.

Many players will likely not agree with this statement. Fortunately, there doesn't need to be universal or widespread agreement.

I can't imagine any practical sense where I'm going to request my healers let me drop horrendously low to optimize my damage with this ability, and I know I'm not going to be the only one in high end raiding guilds feeling the same way.

Great, that's why it's a talent. Choose a different talent.

The alternatives on the tier simply aren't that great either from a gameplay stance, as Gomak elaborated on, as none of them change up how you play and simply add passive benefits.

Totally fair, and while it isn't possible to get every talent in a tier to be interesting to every individual, we certainly do want there to be a choice on any given tier that you find cool.

Sigma

Scisma is indeed meant to improve Espiazione healing; that is fixed in the next build. It will also be buffed to compete better with Rimprovero.

It is intended that Stella Divina and Aureola only Atone once per cast--this allows them to deal AoE damage without resulting in overpowered Espiazione healing in multi-target situations.

Commenti

Commento di Eylsmear

on 2016-03-05T11:36:38-06:00

"Glyph of Travel is not currently planned to return" Aw...no more running around with a friend on my back? It was more for fun than anything most often anyways. Still kinda sad to see it go! Can't wait for the book! Looks like a good read, plus I love it when books include maps!

Commento di Arraya

on 2016-03-05T12:47:14-06:00

So much lore! I need those books now!

Now I'm starting to see Sargeras as a "what must be done" character, much like Illidan!

Commento di Helldoctor

on 2016-03-05T14:12:39-06:00

DesvinWe'll be rotating between battlegrounds, skirmishes and Ashran throughout the beta. We want to focus people on one particular activity during Beta.

BETA?

Commento di Random0056

on 2016-03-05T14:31:00-06:00

The book is something I'm excited for, especially the lore tied to it.

Commento di johnfrew111

on 2016-03-05T15:31:25-06:00

Old Gods are the reason for Sargeras turning...Knew it all along! I have a bet with two mates of this and I cannot wait to take my winnings, a spectral tiger and a TCG pet of my choice!

Commento di mathiaslindberg

on 2016-03-05T15:49:44-06:00

I wonder if the eight picture means the Broken Isles will be North East of the Maelstrom, rather than North West of the Maelstrom.

Commento di N0083rP00F

on 2016-03-05T16:15:00-06:00

Book on amazon.ca is 50 bucks - wtf markup much amazon?

Commento di guardiantitan

on 2016-03-05T16:58:26-06:00

I'm curious on the "beta" comment myself. Does that mean Blizzard has no intention of opening up testing to non-mythic raiders and will only consider mythic raider feedback rather than the feedback of the rest of us? Or is Blizzard confused on what they're calling this testing phase so some developers think it's beta and the rest alpha? Either way, it doesn't exactly build confidence. After WoD, I was hoping Legion beta would be the biggest yet (even larger than MoP's with the annual pass) to ensure a wide variety of feedback and reviews as well as to ensure players actually find the expansion enjoyable this time, but seems this might be the smallest ... and possibly shortest beta yet. Blizzard largely focused on raiders in WoD and where did that get them? It's irritating to see the only feedback they're really taking right now is from the same crowd that WoD was largely designed for. Blizzard shot themselves in the foot once already. I guess they're going to shoot themselves in the other foot before long.

Commento di perculia

on 2016-03-05T17:12:37-06:00

I think we're technically still in alpha because the Blizzard forums are all called Legion Alpha. That said, it's easy to get confused (I've called it beta myself) and when you log into the game, it does say Version 7.0.3 (21232) (Beta x64). It's been called beta on the login screen this entire time though, I think.

Commento di McAlly

on 2016-03-05T17:30:32-06:00

The idea's you guys had for the battlepets were not so great imho. As completist if there are 700+ cometic battlepets item to get i want them. If you have to level 700+ pets that can have something special you want it.A solution i think of is that Blizzard have to limit the number of epic battlepets you can get. Max 10 to 20. And they can add a few with every patch.

Commento di Istaro

on 2016-03-05T17:44:45-06:00

"Glyph of Travel is not currently planned to return" Aw...no more running around with a friend on my back? It was more for fun than anything most often anyways. Still kinda sad to see it go!

Commento di zim57398

on 2016-03-05T21:29:40-06:00

Wait, so does this mean

the Legion's mission is to actually SAVE the universe? Destroy everything in the hopes that the Void Lords don't corrupt all of creation in a vain hope that something somewhere will survive the firestorm? This puts the Legion in a whole new light.

Commento di TehLucario

on 2016-03-05T21:51:39-06:00

That would mean N'zoth is in Vashj'ir... wonder what's in the rift under the Mealstrom then...

Commento di TehLucario

on 2016-03-05T21:56:58-06:00

Oh wait, scratch that, he's right off the coast of the Broken isles!

Commento di X452beserker

on 2016-03-06T01:05:39-06:00

so I really like the sound of the new honor system but whats going to happen to the previous sets of honor gear? will it require gold and a certain honor level or just gold or will they be gotten rid of and replaced with darkmoon gear?

Commento di helladin

on 2016-03-06T02:43:23-06:00

i think pre xmas was alpha now at betabut becouse of close beta no real diffrence

i think will come open beta or ptr will be same

Commento di Iamme

on 2016-03-06T03:38:04-06:00

Wait, so does this mean

the Legion's mission is to actually SAVE the universe? Destroy everything in the hopes that the Void Lords don't corrupt all of creation in a vain hope that something somewhere will survive the firestorm? This puts the Legion in a whole new light.

Sargeras, in his mind is doing just that. Eradicating worlds in hope of killing any other world soul and purge the universe of corruption. As long as there are no more world souls, void lords will have little reason to spread their corruption further.

Commento di lexthor

on 2016-03-06T03:55:52-06:00

Titans... oh, NO!

Commento di MyMindWontQuiet

on 2016-03-06T06:23:00-06:00

Wait, so does this mean

the Legion's mission is to actually SAVE the universe? Destroy everything in the hopes that the Void Lords don't corrupt all of creation in a vain hope that something somewhere will survive the firestorm? This puts the Legion in a whole new light.

His logic, as written in the book, is that it's better to destroy all creation, rather than letting it succomb to the Void. He'd literally see the universe burn to ashes rather than giving it up to the Void Lords.

Commento di Stitchpunk

on 2016-03-06T07:34:19-06:00

Wait, so does this mean

the Legion's mission is to actually SAVE the universe? Destroy everything in the hopes that the Void Lords don't corrupt all of creation in a vain hope that something somewhere will survive the firestorm? This puts the Legion in a whole new light.

His logic, as written in the book, is that it's better to destroy all creation, rather than letting it succomb to the Void. He'd literally see the universe burn to ashes rather than giving it up to the Void Lords.

It's also worth noting that, when that plan was all said and doneTo quote a certain redish fact checker who spoke on another site: "Sargeras reasoned that if life arose once, it could do so again in the future (with the added caveat that he and the Legion would be there to make sure the Void Lords didn't find a way to get in like they did with the Old Gods)."

However, let's keep in mind that

While this was his mindset at the start of it all, it was before he was "defeated" or "stopped" a number of times by mortals of Azeroth. While his overall goal is most likely the same, it's more than likely that he isn't happy that he's been slowed down so much by this particular "planet" and will most likely do something that goes beyond just plain ol' "genocide" for the folks of Azeroth. Possibly something that may even unintentionally hinder his original plan.As far as story and gameplay goes, this is what still makes him the villian we have considered him to be thus far.